In the late 1990s, when the thirteenth world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, faced the “umbrella” organization of chess – FIDE, no one could have predicted that his grievances against the FIDE president of At the time, Florencio Compamanes, would echo his later complaints almost word for word. against Vladimir Putin during the latter’s first and second presidential terms: increasing authoritarianism, nepotism, opacity, corruption and favoritism, leading to an erosion of democratic processes within the “umbrella” organization. This has made it a closed society where corporate interests take precedence over the public good and are pursued at the expense of the latter.
As history knows, Garry Kasparov lost his battle against Putin and left Russia in 2012, and the whole world watched in amazement, via online platforms, how Putin’s Russia transformed into over the last two years.
In today’s Georgia, which has been striving for thirty years to free itself from Russian occupation and fully integrate into the European community, there is no prominent figure in the arts world whose dissident voice resonates like that of Kasparov. However, the International Confederation of Authors and Composers (the main umbrella organization for copyright matters – CISAC) is experiencing a sense of deja vu with its grievances against the outgoing leader, Gadi Oron, which recall the great scandal of the failures of the last century. While Kasparov had accused the president of the international chess organization of collusion with the Soviet Union Chess Federation (a member of FIDE) and of defending Anatoly Karpov, the communist regime’s favorite chess player, Gadi Oron, long-time president of the Chess Federation of the Soviet Union. The Georgian Copyright Federation (CISAC member) now faces accusations of similar lobbying.
The events unfolded as follows:
Last year, a comprehensive reform was undertaken in the field of copyright and related rights management in Georgia. This reform, in accordance with the directives of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, examined in depth the issues of collective management of property rights and, following international best practices, established regulations.
The process of amending the Georgian Law on “Copyright and Related Rights” continued with the support and participation of partners CLDP and USAID. Transparency and inclusiveness were ensured from the start of the project. Many authoritative international organizations were directly involved in the drafting process. Two public hearings and several working sessions with international experts were organized regarding the bill.
The new law enshrines the principles of transparency, fairness and good governance, providing strong legal guarantees for the protection of rights holders and users. In addition, the law mandates the accreditation of organizations engaged in the collective management of property rights.
The entire accreditation process complied with international standards and Georgian legislative requirements. Sakpatent announced a competition for accreditation bodies for collective management of property rights, with the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPOA) emerging victorious. The current Georgian Copyright Association (GCA), which had enjoyed a monopoly in this field for 12 years under the leadership of the unchanging president, Giga Kobaladze, was disqualified from the competition.
It should be noted that as part of the reform, two independent audit firms examined Kobaladze’s activities and discovered many gross violations. It was revealed that the GCA president had, over the years, embezzled almost half (47%) of the association’s accumulated dues for the comfort of his administration, far exceeding established standards of good governance in the field . As a result, more than 14 million GEL were squandered and illegally misappropriated.
The revelation of these scandalous facts triggered a wave of departures from the GCA by many prominent Georgian authors who, together with former members of the GCA’s rival organization “GERA”, created a new organization, IPOA , and emerged winners of the competition.
In this context, the aggressively negative attitude of CISAC towards the extensive reform in Georgia and its results raises many questions. Gadi Oron’s demands to annul the results of the competition and, moreover, to reassess the successful reform under Western patronage, are being met without proper justification. In Georgia, it is believed that the problem lies not in the failure of reform, but in the lobbying (favoritism) of the GCA president by the CISAC leadership, who was ousted from the field leadership by the reform. CISAC is suspected of having tried to derail the reform aimed at protecting “soldier Kobaladze”.
Georgians also recall earlier examples of dubious lobbying by CISAC leaders, citing the case of Russia, where Fedotov, the former president of the Society of Russian Authors (RAO) – hailed as the best manager and supported by Gadi Oron – was involved in financial embezzlement. then imprisoned. Fedotov had illegally acquired a palace in Britain with royalties belonging to the authors, a subject widely covered by the British press.
The Georgian government does not intend to revise the reform, as evidenced by the correspondence between CISAC and the management of the Georgian Intellectual Property Agency (Sakpatent), published in the Georgian media, revealing the weak arguments and bias of CISAC against the reform.
The future will determine the success of the Georgian reform, which should primarily benefit Georgian authors, especially those who broke away from Kobaladze and triumphed under the auspices of the new organization.
Top of form
Bottom of form
source link eu news
